Pamela Anderson Wants $19.4 Million For Malibu Beach House

Pamela Anderson, the actress who rose to fame playing a California beach lifeguard on “Baywatch,” is putting her own California beach house on the market for around $19.4 million.

Before buying this property, Ms Anderson said she had lived right on the sand, but found that fans would come up to the property looking for her. “A girl actually ended up in our guest bedroom and had my ‘Baywatch’ swimsuit on,” she said, referring to the bright-red one-piece she was frequently photographed in. “That was it for me.”

In 2000, Ms Anderson bought a site, which backs onto a lagoon, for about US$1.8 million, records show; she said she later replaced a “shabby chic” cottage with a new home for herself and her two young sons.

“It took me 10 years to build—I put another $8 million cash into it,” Ms Anderson said in written comments.

Located in a gated community in Malibu, Calif., the three-bedroom house is about 5,500 square feet and includes a large open-plan living, dining room and kitchen area with a fireplace, a rooftop deck and an expansive pool deck with spaces for outdoor dining and sunbathing. The kitchen has slab stone counters and glass pocket doors that open to the pool. A wood-and-glass staircase leads to the main bedroom suite, which has a private balcony. There is also a one-bedroom guesthouse on the property.

Ms Anderson, who in recent years has appeared on reality television shows like “Dancing with the Stars,” noted that the property was inspired by some of California’s best known Modernist architecture, such as the Case Study Houses, experimental, modern homes designed by architects like Richard Neutra.

“I love a vintage edge/pop art sensibility and I’m an activist so it is 100% sustainable Teak that is also ‘nonconflict’ flown in from Burma,” Ms Anderson said in her comments. “I must have paid $1 million just in materials for siding. I don’t like orange—so we bleached and waxed—the finish is more blonde.”

Some of her favourite features of the property include the guesthouse, which she said has “the most beautiful view,” and the reflective mosaic tiles in the pool. Her bedroom, she said, is “just the most sensual and clean space” with a bathtub in the room and a sauna attached. Ms Anderson also installed solar panels on the property and planted an irrigated vegetable garden.

Ms Anderson, 53, said she left Canada in her early 20s to work with Playboy and is now selling to go back to her roots. She recently married her onetime bodyguard Dan Hayhurst, and the two plan to live on her ranch on the water on Vancouver Island, she said. That property was owned by her late grandmother.

“When she passed, I just let it go for 20 years while I worked and travelled,” Ms Anderson said. “I have spent the last year here renovating, landscaping, creating gardens so that we can live sustainably. Greenhouse, potter’s wheel, canning pickles and beets. I’m creating my life here now again where it all started.”

“I made it home in one piece, a miracle. I’m a lucky girl,” she said.

Tomer Fridman of the Tomer Fridman Group has the Malibu listing.

Manhattan’s office-vacancy rate climbed to more than 15% this year, a record high. About 80 miles away in Philadelphia, occupancy also is at historically low levels. But a 24-storey office tower located between the two cities has more than doubled its occupancy over the past five years.

Developer American Equity Partners bought the New Jersey office tower, known as 1 Tower Center, for $38 million in 2019. At the time, the 40-year-old building felt dated. It had no gym, tenant lounge or car-charging stations. The low price enabled the firm to spend more than $20 million overhauling and luring tenants to the 435,000-square-foot property.

Now, the suburban building is nearly fully leased at competitive rents, mopping up tenants from other buildings after the owner added a new lobby, movie theatre, golf simulator, fitness centre and a tenant lounge featuring arcade games and ping-pong tables.

“Our tenants told us what they needed in order to fill up their offices,” said David Elkouby , a co-founder of American Equity, which owns about 4 million square feet of New Jersey office space.

The new owner also liked the location at the 14-acre hotel and conference-centre complex, off the New Jersey Turnpike’s Exit 9 in East Brunswick. The site is a relatively short commute for millions of workers in central New Jersey and is passed by 160,000 vehicles daily.

The property’s turnaround shows how office buildings can thrive even during dismal times for most of the U.S. office market, where vacancies remain much higher than pre pandemic.

Success often requires an ideal location—one that shortens the commute time of employees used to working at home—and the sort of upgrades and amenities companies say are necessary to lure employees back to the workspace.

One Vanderbilt, a deluxe office tower with a Michelin-star chef’s restaurant and plenty of outdoor space in Midtown Manhattan, is fully leased while charging some of the highest rents in the country.

The 11-story Entrada office building, in Culver City, Calif., is making the same formula work on the other coast. It opened two years ago with a sky deck, concierge services and recessed balconies. A restaurant is in the works. The owner said this month that it has signed three of the largest leases in the Los Angeles area this year.

1 Tower Center shows how the strategy can be effective even in less glamorous suburban locations. The tower is prospering while neighbouring buildings that are harder to reach with outdated facilities and poor food options struggle to fill desks even at reduced rents.

The recent interest-rate cut and reports that some big companies such as Amazon .com are re-instituting a five-day office workweek have raised hopes that the office market might be getting closer to turning.

But with more than 900 million square feet of vacant space nationwide and remote work still weighing on office demand, more creditors are seizing properties that are in default on debt payments.

Rates are still much higher than they were when tens of billions of dollars of office loans were made, and much of that debt is now maturing. The recent interest-rate cut doesn’t mean “office-sector woes are now over,” said Ermengarde Jabir, director of economic research for Moody’s commercial real-estate division.

Lenders are dumping distressed properties at steep discounts to what the buildings were worth before the pandemic. Some buyers are trying to compete simply by cutting their rents.

“Most owners don’t have the wherewithal to do what is required,” said Jamie Drummond, the Newmark senior managing director who is 1 Tower Center’s leasing agent. “Owners positioned to highly amenitise their buildings are the ones who are successful.”

HCLTech, a global technology company, illustrates the appeal. It greatly expanded its presence in New Jersey by moving this year to a 40,000-square-foot space designed for its East Coast headquarters at 1 Tower Center.

The India-based company said it was drawn to the building’s amenities and design. That made possible a variety of workspaces for employees, from quiet nooks to an artificial-intelligence lab. “You can’t just open an office and expect [employees] to be there,” said Meenakshi Benjwal , HCLTech’s head of Americas marketing.

HCLTech also liked the location near the homes of its employees and clients in the pharmaceutical, financial-services and other businesses.

Finally, it didn’t hurt that the building is a short drive from nearby MetLife Stadium. The company has a 75-person suite on the 50 yard line where it entertains clients at concerts and National Football League games.

“All of our clients love to fly from distant locations to experience the suite and stadium,” Benjwal said.

Pamela Anderson Wants $19.4 Million For Malibu Beach House

Inspired by some of California’s best known Modernist architecture.

New amenities, from a gym to a movie theatre, and a good commuter location filled this suburban office tower